In the environment of entertainment application of digital home, HDMI and DVI were the two main specifications for TV accessories. In view of the present application, the penetration rate of HDMI in digital TV and digital home accessories is higher than that of DVI. Therefore, HDMI, which is wired, is the main interface as a communication standard of digital video and audio entertainment transmission since there is shortage of wireless video transmission technology. However, compared to the wired technique, the wireless technique has advantages of low deployment cost, good appearance, and mobility over the wired technique. Thus, the wireless technique will be the future trend for digital home video and audio transmission application in the long-term.
In view of high-definition television transmission, it's important to guarantee that there are no losses in the bandwidth and packet. As to the wireless transmission technique, the non-compressed 720p/1080i video data requires a bandwidth of 1.5 Gbit/s; the compressed H.264 MPEG4 AVC video data requires a bandwidth in a range of 2˜15 Mbit/s; and the non-compressed 1080p video data requires a bandwidth in a range of 3˜5 Gbit/s. The data has to be compressed since the bandwidth required therefor is too large for the WLAN. Regarding the wireless network technology, the 802.11n standard was not designed for video and audio transmission but for data transmission. The focus of data transmission is a rapid transmission rate so that some errors are tolerable. There is a function of rate adaptation in such technology. Even if there are errors in the information transmission, a retransmission can fix it. As to video and audio transmission, a stable transmission requires an adequate rate since the timing is essential for video and audio, i.e. stability is more important than speed while the rate is sufficient. It needs some particular designs to transmit video and audio over WiFi so as to satisfy the requirements of high-definition video and audio transmission under the present technology.
In regard to a smooth video streaming, the prior art, which restricted packet error rate, renders inefficient usage of wireless resources. Moreover, the multimedia transmission is unstable in the optimal throughput method since the requirements of packet error rate or the quality of service were not considered therefor.
It is therefore attempted by the applicant to deal with the above limitations of the prior art.